Trump has a problem: Americans increasingly think he's incompetent

Donald Trump has already set a record for being the most unpopular new president since the invention
of telephone polling. But I don't think job approval is the poll
number Trump should be most worried about.

If I were him, I'd be worrying about the question the Quinnipiac
University poll was asking about my leadership skills.

In a new
Quinnipiac survey, out on Wednesday, only 42% of voters said
they think Trump is a good leader, and 55% said he's not.

Trump's big thing is supposed to be leadership — he's the
business guy, he hires the best people, and he knows how to shake
things up in Washington and make America great again. Right?

In November, shortly after the election, 56% of respondents told
Quinnipiac they thought Trump was a good leader, and only 38%
said he wasn't. That's not too shabby for a guy who didn't even
get the most votes.

But as Trump started actually doing stuff — running a transition,
hiring people, issuing half-baked executive orders, firing his
national security adviser after less than a month — the share of
Americans willing to call him a good leader has steadily
declined.

From 56% in November, it went to 49% in January, 47% earlier this
month — and now 42%, or about 4 points less than his share of the
popular vote.

In polling, you often analyze a question by measuring the
difference between the share of respondents that gives the
positive answer and the share that gives the negative one. By
this measure, Trump was at plus-18 on the "good leader" question
in November, and now he's at minus-13, a decline of 31 points in
three months.

His term lasts another 47 months.

(Quinnipiac surveyed 1,323 adults in English or Spanish from
February 16 to 21, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7
percentage points.)

An earlier version of this post incorrectly said Trump had 51
months left in his term. We regret the error.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Insider.